EDITOR: The Nuclear elephant in the room
When creating a monster, one knows how it all starts, but hardly where it will end, as Dr. Frankenstein has found out. Now, after five years of careful incitement by Israel, and especially by Netanyahu, the Iran Nuclear Monster is alive and well, and is actually biting back at it unamused creator. By fanning the flames of this particular fire, and helping to make it such a central issue of the West’s agenda, all of a sudden Netanyahu finds himself being asked by his dinner-table partners: “so how is your nuclear bomb this morning?”. Not fair, is it? After all, all he wanted is to discuss the Iranian future nuclear capacity, so why would anyone wish to discuss Israel’s current nuclear capacity, unless they were antisemitic? Do Jews not have eyes? Can they not have bombs, sentiments, feeelings…
Well, it all went haywire very badly, like that other issue of the day, the Anat Kam story. All Israel wanted is to put on trial the ones who tell of its murders, and instead, the Internatiuonal Elders of Antisemitism, those horribhle people sourounding poor little Zionism , have made this a discussion of Israel’s continuing crimes! Is there no justice for the poor little war criminals?
Leading article: Israel’s nuclear ambiguity: The Independent editorial
Saturday, 10 April 2010
Given his determination to focus the world’s attention on the perils of Iran’s nuclear programme, Benjamin Netanyahu must have had very powerful reasons to pull out of next week’s nuclear security summit in Washington. In fact, the Israeli Prime Minister had two of them.
The lesser one, probably, was his desire to avoid another meeting with President Obama – one that might have highlighted not Tehran’s suspected drive to build a bomb, but the damaging rift with the US over Israel’s continuing settlements expansion in East Jerusalem. More important however, we suspect, was Mr Netanyahu’s fear that the 47-nation conference would have turned an unwelcome spotlight on Israel’s own undeclared nuclear arsenal.
By all accounts, Turkey and Egypt planned to raise the issue of Israel’s refusal to subscribe to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This enables it to avoid international inspections, and thus maintain ambiguity about whether it has nuclear weapons. Israel is presumed to have anywhere between 80 and 200 such warheads, as an ultimate insurance policy against aggression.
But open acknowledgement would change the entire diplomatic equation in the region. Egypt and Turkey are leading a campaign for the Middle East to be declared a nuclear-free zone by the United Nations, not least because of their irritation with the double standards implicit in Israel’s non-participation in the NPT.
Neither wants Iran to acquire nuclear weapons – a development that, if unchecked, would almost certainly set off a nuclear arms race in the region. This would make the Middle East even more dangerous than it is now, and increase the risk of weapons technology, even an actual weapon, falling into terrorist hands. This risk is at the top of the Washington summit agenda.
But it understandably rankles the entire Arab world that the West turns a complaisant eye to Israel’s status as an undeclared nuclear power, while pressing other countries in the region to refrain from developing such technology. Not surprisingly, Iran makes this very argument to justify its own nuclear programme. One way and another, the crisis with Tehran will not be resolved without addressing Israel’s own capability.
Netanyahu Cancels Trip to U.S. Nuclear Summit: NY Times
By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: April 8, 2010
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has canceled his plans to attend the Nuclear Security summit meeting in Washington next week and will send a minister in his place, Israeli and American government officials said Thursday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will send his minister for intelligence affairs to a meeting.
Russia and U.S. Sign Nuclear Arms Reduction Pact (April 9, 2010)
The official declined to explain the last-minute cancellation. But Israeli news media reported that the prime minister feared that Muslim states were planning on using the occasion to raise the question of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear armed power in the Middle East, but it refuses to discuss the issue and has declined to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The official said that Dan Meridor, the minister for intelligence affairs, would attend the meeting, which starts Monday.
In Washington, an administration official confirmed that Mr. Netanyahu had canceled his plans to attend. The official said the United States believed that the cancellation was linked to Israeli concerns that the meeting would be used by some countries to focus on Israel’s nuclear program and its refusal to sign the nonproliferation treaty.
Leaders of nearly four dozen countries are scheduled to attend the meeting, where President Obama is hoping to reach an agreement on securing vulnerable nuclear stockpiles in an attempt to keep them safe from terrorists. But that issue could be further complicated if attending leaders insist on broadening the conversation to include Israel’s reported arsenal. Many Muslim countries, while acknowledging their concern over Iran’s nuclear program, have insisted that the entire region must be made nuclear free.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday quoted a senior Israeli official as saying, “In the last few days, we have received reports about the intention of several participant states to depart from the issue of fighting terrorism and instead misuse the event to goad Israel” over the treaty.
The summit meeting is not supposed to focus on individual nations, but the weapons of North Korea and the nuclear program of Iran, as well as possible sanctions against Iran, are expected to be discussed. Meanwhile, work on possible wording for new sanctions resolutions began at the United Nations on Thursday, where the five permanent members of the Security Council, along with Germany, met to begin discussions.
The Israeli prime minister’s cancellation also comes against the background of recent tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government over the terms for restarting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The United States has asked Israel to take certain steps, and Mr. Netanyahu has yet to respond. The main disagreement is over Israel’s building in contested East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu’s nuclear no-show is victory for Arab pressure: The Guardian
Focus on Iran has boosted demands for a regional approach to disarmament of nuclear weapons in the Middle East
Ian Black, Middle East editor
Israel is estimated to have 150-200 atomic bombs, deliverable by aircraft, missile or submarine. Photograph: Havakuk Levison/Reuters
Binyamin Netanyahu’s decision not to take part in next week’s nuclear security summit in the US will be seen as a victory for mounting Arab and Muslim pressure on Israel over its most controversial and secret weapon.
Egypt has long campaigned on the issue of Israel’s atomic arsenal. Last month the Arab League called on the UN to declare the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Saudi Arabia has been active too. Turkey also backs this demand as it offers to mediate between the west and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Israel, constantly highlighting the danger from Iran, is estimated to have 150 to 200 atomic bombs, deliverable by aircraft, missile or submarine. Its programme was developed after France built a nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev desert in the 1950s. The so-called Samson option was seen by Israel’s first generation of leaders as designed to prevent another Holocaust – its bombs reportedly bearing the slogan “never again”.
Israel, unlike Iran or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, never signed the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which allows countries to develop civilian nuclear power in exchange for forgoing weapons – supposedly the preserve of the five permanent members of the UN security council.
India, Pakistan and North Korea have swelled the ranks of the weapons states, but unlike them, Israel has never come out of the closet, preferring a policy of so-called nuclear ambiguity – keeping its enemies guessing. Israel’s official line has always been that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions have reinforced domestic support and perhaps international tolerance for Israel retaining its arsenal. In diplomatic terms, this has long been a no-go area for the US, Britain and other western countries. But the focus on Iran has also boosted Arab demands for a regional approach to disarmament.
Last September, for the first time in 18 years, Israel, the US and other powers failed to prevent passage of a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling on Israel to sign the NPT and open up Dimona to international inspectors.
Egypt played a key role in negotiating the NPT in the 1960s and tried but failed to link the renewal of the treaty in 1995 to the creation of a nuclear-free zone. Syria, an ally of Iran, denies harbouring nuclear weapons ambitions, a issue that was dramatically highlighted in 2007 when Israeli warplanes destroyed an alleged reactor on the Euphrates.
“There is widespread resentment in the region towards the NPT and what it seeks to achieve, its double standards and lack of political will,” Egypt’s UN ambassador, Hisham Badr, said recently. “We in the Middle East feel we have, short of better word, been tricked into giving concessions for promises that never materialised.”
Israeli PM Netanyahu pulls out of US nuclear summit: BBC
Israel has never confirmed or denied that it possesses atomic weapons
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled a visit to the US where he was to attend a summit on nuclear security, Israeli officials say.
Mr Netanyahu made the decision after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal, the officials said.
Mr Obama is due to host dozens of world leaders at the two-day conference, which begins in Washington on Monday.
Israel has never confirmed or denied that it possesses atomic weapons.
Israel’s Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor will take Netanyahu’s place in the nuclear summit, Israeli radio said.
More than 40 countries are expected at the meeting, which will focus on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to militant groups.
Iran’s issue
According to Israeli officials, Turkey and Egypt are planning to call on Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“These states intend to exploit the occasion in order to slam Israel,” said a senior Israeli source.
ANALYSIS
Paul Wood
Mr Netanyahu’s decision is on the face of it quite odd. After all, he must have expected some focus on Israel’s own nuclear programme at this conference.
Indeed, he acknowledged this possibility two days ago when he announced he would attend. He said that since Israel was not a terrorist or a rogue state, he had nothing to fear.
Certainly Israel is worried about pressure to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. That is something which will increasingly become an issue since the Israelis have also announced their intention to build a civilian nuclear power station to deal with a severe electricity shortage.
But what about Israel’s nuclear weapons? The former US President, Jimmy Carter, who is certainly in a position to know, has said the Israelis have at least 150 warheads.
Mr Netanyahu has said his main priority in office is dealing with Iran’s supposed intentions to develop both warheads and long range missiles capable of hitting Israel. In these circumstances, Mr Netanyahu thinks it more vital than ever to protect his own weapons programme.
“The prime minister expressed his displeasure over these intentions, and he will therefore not be travelling to the summit.”
Mr Netanyahu has said his main priority is dealing with Iran’s supposed intention to develop both warheads and long-range missiles capable of hitting Israel.
Along with India, Pakistan and North Korea, Israel is one of just four states that have not signed up to the NPT, which has 189 signatories.
Earlier this week, President Obama unveiled the new Nuclear Posture Review – which narrows the circumstances in which the US would use nuclear weapons – outlining his country’s long-term strategy of nuclear disarmament.
On Thursday, the US president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a landmark nuclear arms treaty in the Czech capital, Prague.
That treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 each – 30% lower than the previous ceiling.
The BBC’s Kim Ghattas in Washington says the cancellation of Mr Netanyahu’s Washington visit comes at a time of frosty relations between the two states.
The Israeli premier failed to see eye-to-eye with Mr Obama during his most recent US visit last month on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, our correspondent adds.
Washington criticised the building of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, which prompted the Palestinians to pull out of US-brokered indirect peace talks.
There were also reports that one of Mr Netanyahu’s confidants called Mr Obama a “disaster” for Israel.
Binyamin Netanyahu pulls out of Washington nuclear weapons summit: The Guardian
Barack Obama considers plan B for Middle East settlement as relations between Israel and US deteriorate
Binyamin Netanyahu has cancelled his trip to Washington next week. Photograph: Sebastian Scheiner/AP
Relations between Israel and the US took another turn for the worsetoday after the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, cancelled a trip to Washington next week amid reports that Barack Obama’s administration is seriously considering a Plan B for a Middle East peace settlement.
An Obama administration official said that the preference is still for talks between Israel and the Palestinians but admitted that if that failed, it will look at alternative options, including Obama setting out his own Middle East proposal for a comprehensive peace deal.
A group of senior foreign advisers, including former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who give informal advice to the White House at regular meetings, recommended recently that if the attempts to get the Israeli-Palestinian talks under way continued to be stalled, the US should impose its own plan.
Netanyahu had been dithering over whether to attend a 47-nation summit in Washington next week to discuss nuclear weapons proliferation. His office announced in the middle of the week that he would be attending but on Thursday reversed this. His deputy, Dan Meridor, is to attend in his place.
An Israeli official said it was because Turkey and Egypt and other Muslim nations intended to raise questions about Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Relations between Netanyahu and Obama have been tense because the Israeli prime minister refuses to provide concrete assurances that Israel will stop building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian pre-condition for beginning talks.
Obama’s national security adviser, General Jim Jones, briefing reporters yesterday on a flight back to Washington from the Prague nuclear treaty signing, expressed disappointment that Netanyahu would not be present but said he understood that he had other commitments related to Holocaust Day events.
Asked about a US Plan B for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, Jones said no decision had been taken and the White House remained committed to trying, firstly, to get indirect talks – “proximity” talks – under way that would, hopefully, lead to direct talks.
When a reporter said it sounded as if Plan B was under consideration, Jones said: “The idea of a US plan has been talked about for years. It’s not something new. But there will be no surprise to any of the participants at all. So we’re focused on the resumption of the talks. The best way to help us in our collective goals is to restart the peace talks. It will also help us in what we’re trying to achieve with Iran.”
An Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was a genuine reluctance to go down the route of presenting a US peace plan because it was difficult to impose a deal on two antagonists. He said there was a problem because some Palestinians and Arab countries assumed that Washington was going to do this and had discounted going into proximity talks.
Avner Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb, interviewed on RT America, criticised Netanyahu for not attending the summit. “I think it is silly, an unfortunate decision,” he said, adding that the prospect of Muslim nations raising Israel’s nuclear capability was not a reason not to attend.
EDITOR: Netanyahu’s Stand-in
So, we are told that in spite of reality, representations will insist on ‘the show must go on’… But who actually cares about this show or even remotely believes in it? Israel, now willing to bury its nuclear head in the sands of oblivion, is sending a minister instead; which minister? Easy – the Minister of Intelligence… how very intelligent of this country to have a Minister of (military) Intelligence!
‘U.S.-Israel ties fine regardless of Netanyahu’s nuclear summit cancellation’: Haaretz
President Barack Obama’s administration believes Israel’s delegation to next week’s nuclear security summit in Washington will be “robust,” despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decision not to attend,
a top official said on Friday.
“We obviously would like to have the prime minister but the deputy prime minister will be leading the delegation and it will be a robust Israeli delegation,” U.S. National Security Adviser General Jim Jones told reporters traveling on Air Force One.
He also said that relationships between the U.S. and Israel are “ongoing, fine and continuous.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday welcomed the Israeli delegation’s participation in the conference by saying, “Israel shares with us a deep concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and also about the threat of nuclear terrorism.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his planned trip to Washington, where he was scheduled to participate in a nuclear security summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, government officials said.
Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor will take Netanyahu’s place in the nuclear summit.
Obama has invited more than 40 countries to the summit, which will deal with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorist groups.
Netanyahu was due to arrive in Washington on Monday evening and was set to take part in three or four conference sessions the follwoing day, before returning to Israel on Wednesday.
Officials said the PM canceled the trip over fears that a group of Muslim states, led by Egypt and Turkey, would demand that Israel sign up to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT.
A senior government official told Haaretz that that Israel was “disappointed” with developments in the run-up to the conference.
“The nuclear security summit is supposed to be about dealing with the danger of nuclear terror,” the official said. “Israel is a part of that effort and has responded positively to President Obama’s invitation to the conference.”
The official added: “But that said, in the last few days we have received reports about the intention of several participant states to depart from the issue of combatting terrorism and instead misuse the event to goad Israel over the NPT.”
The White House said it had been informed Netanyahu would not attend the summit and that Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor would lead the Israeli delegation.
“We welcome Deputy Prime Minister Meridor’s participation in the conference. Israel is a close ally and we look forward to continuing to work closely on issues related to nuclear security,” said Mike Hammer, White House National Security Council spokesman.
In New Orleans, hundreds of party loyalists at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference applauded when they were informed Netanyahu had just canceled his visit to Washington.
At the gathering, Liz Cheney, daughter of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, blasted Obama for his “shabby” treatment of Netanyahu at the White House recently, saying it was “disgraceful”.
She added: “Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East and one of our strongest allies anywhere around this globe. And President Obama is playing a reckless game of continuing down the path of diminishing America’s ties to Israel.”
One hundred eighty-nine countries, including all Arab states, are party to the NPT. Only Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea are not.
Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons but operates a policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’, never publicly confirming or denying their existence.
Many Muslim countries have voiced alarm at alleged nuclear programs in Israel and Iran, and have repeatedly called for an agreement to ban nuclear weapons from the region.
In late March the Arab League called for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons during a closed-door sessio, calling for a review of the 1970 NPT in order to create a definitive plan for eliminating nuclear weapons .
They also called on the UN to declare the Middle East as a nuclear-weapons-free region.
EDITOR: The Anat Kam story rolls on
If you don’t like the message, kill the messenger… Instead of putting the IOF commanders on trial for breaking Israel’s own laws, ther people who will face trial are the ones who told us of the criminal deeds. Stalin would have loved this!
Anat Kam: I hope the case will be taken in proper perspective: Haaretz
Anat Kam, the 23-year-old ex-IDF soldier charged for allegedly appropriating top secret documents during her military service and then passing them to a Haaretz reporter, told Channel 2 on Saturday that she hopes the matter will be over soon and that it will be taken in proper perspective.
Kam said that she is doing okay and apologized for not being able to discuss the case in detail.
“Understand the legal sensitivities of this,” she said. “Everything I say is problematic.”
Kam is accused of appropriating 2,000 documents, 700 of which were classified as “top secret” while serving in the IDF’s Central Command in 2007. After her army service, Kam went on to work for the Walla news agency.
Among the materials Kam allegedly transferred to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau were files showing that high-ranking Israel Defense Forces officers had approved targeted assassinations of wanted Palestinians who could have instead been detained – authorization that violates a High Court ruling against such actions. The material gathered in these documents allegedly formed the basis for an article Blau published in Haaretz Magazine November 2008.
Kam has been under house arrest at her Tel Aviv home for four months. On Thursday, the Tel Aviv District Court partially lifted the gag order on the case, which has received attention from the foreign press in recent weeks.
Kam faces two counts of aggravated espionage – one for the passing of classified material with the intent to harm national security, a charge typically carrying a life sentence; the other for gathering and possessing secret information with the intent to harm national security, a charge carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years.
Haaretz is currently negotiating with the legal authorities to ensure that Blau will not face charges upon his return to Israel. Blau is currently in London
This isn’t just a war for my freedom but for Israel’s image: Haaretz
By Uri Blau
The telephone call I received about a month ago should not have been a surprise. “Your apartment in Tel Aviv has been broken into,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Everything’s in a mess and it’s not clear what has been taken.”
Half an hour later, sweating in a Bangkok phone booth, mosquitoes flying around me, I spoke to the policeman who came to the apartment.
“Looks like they were looking for something,” he said.
I had been told of Anat Kam’s arrest earlier, in China, where I landed with my partner at the beginning of December. When I left Israel I had no reason to believe our planned trip would suddenly turn into a spy movie whose end is not clear. I certainly didn’t think I’d have to stay in London and wouldn’t be able to return to Tel Aviv as a journalist and a free man, only because I published reports that were not convenient to the establishment.
But the troubling information from Israel left me with no alternative.
Experiences I had read about in suspense novels have become my reality in recent months. When you’re warned “they know much more than you think,” and are told that your telephone line, e-mail and computer have been monitored for a long time and still are, then someone up there doesn’t really understand what democracy is all about, and the importance of freedom of the press in preserving it.
When you discover that anonymous complaints about you containing a lot of detailed personal information have reached various investigation authorities, it is clear you have been marked by forces bigger and stronger than yourself. These forces won’t hesitate to take steps reserved for states I don’t think we want to resemble. So when they explained to me that if I return to Israel I could be silenced for ever, and that I would be charged for crimes related to espionage, I decided to fight. Sorry for the cliche, but this isn’t only a war for my personal freedom but for Israel’s image.
The Kafkaesque situation I found myself in forces me to return to basics. I am a journalist and my aim is to provide the reader as much information as possible and in the best way, with maximum objectivity. It’s not a personal agenda, or a matter of Left or Right. In my years of work for Haaretz my name has appeared, alone and with others, above exposes dealing with public figures and institutions of all kinds, from Avigdor Lieberman, through Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak to the Peres Center for Peace. None of those exposes could have been published without the help of sources and corroborating documents.
All the exposes in military or defense matters were vetted by military censors before publication, whether regarding the time Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi was a civilian and businessman or about the IDF’s priorities in tracing Gilad Shalit. Or the story about how the IDF apparently violates the High Court of Justice’s instructions regarding targeted assassinations. This story showed the readers authentic documents exposing the banality of executions with no trial.
It is clear to me that these reports were not always pleasant to read – neither to their subjects nor to the reader. But it doesn’t matter, because the journalist’s job is not to please his reader, employer or leaders. It is to provide people with the best tools to judge and understand the goings-on around them. Every journalist knows that exposes cannot be released without evidence – but no Israeli journalist has known until now that such exposes could have him declared an enemy of the state and find himself in jail.
Harrass the IDF, not alleged whistleblower Anat Kam: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
Are Israelis entitled to know that the IDF’s highest ranking officers gave advanced written permission to fire at innocent people during “targeted assassinations?” Isn’t the media’s supreme duty, not only its right, to report this?
Are Israel’s citizens entitled to know that IDF commanders approved killing people even when it was possible to apprehend them, in blatant violation of the High Court’s ruling?
Aren’t we entitled to know about a secret Defense Ministry report saying about 75 percent of settlements construction has been carried out without a permit? That public structures in more than 30 settlements were built on private Palestinian land?
These are but few of the goings on exposed by journalist Uri Blau and which the state wanted to conceal. Now the state wants to settle the score with both the source and the journalist. In fact it wants to do more than settle the score.
Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin yesterday openly threatened, in the most scandalous way, that his organization will “remove its gloves” in dealing with this affair. “We were too sensitive to the media world … that’s the lesson we’ve learned from the affair,” he said.
The lesson to be learned from the affair should be the exact opposite. A security service that destroys journalists’ computers and threatens them has no place in a democratic state. The defense establishment is not trying (only) to keep state secrets in this case, but to cover-up grievous acts committed in the territories. These deeds were committed in our name, therefore we must know everything about them.
The violent, bullying defense establishment, which smashes computers, wants to settle the score with those who knew and would not keep silent; with those who witnessed the acts and would not take part in the cover up.
The Shin Bet has won again. Instead of dealing with the outrageous acts that were exposed, finding those responsible and bringing them to trial, everyone is preoccupied with persecuting the messengers and hunting down the whistleblowers. This is going on with the support of the security service’s numerous mouthpieces in the media.
Anat Kam probably overheard corrupt discussions and should have been treated like any other whistleblower – the state should have protected her. The same applies to the journalist who exposed corruption. The witch hunt that came out yesterday after weeks of gagging – which also has no place in a democracy – is moving in the wrong direction, as the Shin Bet intended.
The GOC Central Command, in whose office the assassination meetings took place, should be the one in the heart of the furor. Instead, it’s the one who reported them.
As usual with us, the marginal takes precedence over the primary, covered with layers of fake security arguments. The Palestinians already know the IDF and Border Police shoot to kill them even when they can merely arrest them.
But the IDF and Shin Bet don’t want us to know that. It has nothing to do with security. It has everything to do with the kind of regime we’re living in.
Yesterday a new Bus 300 affair began. Bus 300 was hijacked by Palestinians in 1984. Two of the hijackers, who were first reported to have been killed when security forces took over the bus, were in fact executed while in captivity by Shin Bet agents.
Then too, when the media published what happened, violating the censorship laws, some people found fault with the media instead of with the Shin Bet killers.
Consequently, the Hadashot newspaper, which published a picture of one of the hijackers being taken off the bus alive, was penalized and the killers received, eventually, a sweeping pardon. Only in time did it come out that the media was only doing its duty, and it led to cleaning the Shin Bet stables from lies and despicable acts of manslaughter.
It should be hoped that this time the public also understands that illegal, villainous acts must not be covered up by smashing the mirror (and computer).
‘Ex-soldier accused of espionage is made a scapegoat’: IOA
Anat Kam, the journalist and ex-soldier suspected of “serious espionage” for allegedly giving classified information to a reporter from Haaretz regarding the IDF’s rules of engagement has been made a scapegoat, her defense attorney told Army Radio Thursday. “Where’s the intent to undermine state security? The fact that she handed the information over to a journalist for him to publish,” Avidgor Feldman told Army Radio.
IOA Editor: While the story of the whistleblower — an innocent, well-meaning, and very naive young woman — is important, it is far more important not to forget the message while focusing on the fate of the messengers. The original news story was about senior IDF generals, including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, knowingly violating Israeli Supreme Court ruling by ordering the assassinations of West Bank Palestinians who could have been captured alive. Much as it is important to cover Israel’s censorship practices and the limits to its democracy (which are both profound and numerous), the important story behind the current expose is the ongoing story of the Occupation: Israel’s 43-year long Occupation has been fraught with assassinations — “targeted,” mass-produced, or just random and wanton, the distinctions largely depend on circumstances, media vogue, or the commentator.
Liberal circles in the US and Israel, that are particularly critical of the current Israeli government, focus on this latest story as though it were the most important issue of the day. It is not. Important as it is to expose the IDF’s plans to act in contravention of Israeli Supreme Court decisions — as if these are the only legal matters the IDF routinely contravenes — it is the Occupation that looms large, and is consistently ignored or minimized by, among others, the very same critics who now cry foul about IDF violations of freedom of speech. The IDF record of violations is far, far worse than violating the right of publishing reports of its own planned crimes. Much as this is obvious to some of us, it appears many others conveniently overlook the most significant crime involved here: the Occupation itself.
Rest assured that Israel’s penal system will deal with the offending messengers as it knows best: Ms. Kam is likely to spend many years in jail (a-la Mr. Vanunu), and Mr. Blau, should he return to Israel from his self-imposed exile, will face a similar fate. The arch-criminals are not about to surrender their empire on account of a whistleblower. Thus, even as we focus on the journalists, let’s be sure to keep a steady eye on the actual criminals, and on their empire.
Note on linking to the original Uri Blau story: This news report, here and in the original Haaretz article, includes a reference to a link to the original Uri Blau story. However, no such link is included. Furthermore, a search on the Haaretz English website results in no articles by Uri Blau, and only the following title of an article related to Mr Blau’s original findings: Rights group to Mazuz: Probe IDF targeted killings in West Bank. However, as of today (8 April 2010), this link leads to a blank page on the Haaretz website. It is possible that Haaretz decided to remove all of Mr. Blau’s work, or even references to it, from its English website, or to remove search results, without removing the pages themselves. The following is a link to the Hebrew version of the original Uri Blau story which prompted this Israeli Censorship affair: www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1041551.html.
As has often been the case in Israel, including with Haaretz coverage, certain discussions are restricted to domestic circles and Hebrew-only, lest the world discover just who we really are, and what we actually do in the Occupied Territories. It is not clear whether Haaretz removed the offending Blau work based on legal advice (if so, why not the Hebrew version?), or because it chose not to push its luck with the Military Authorities, or perhaps its English language website search functions are poorly designed.
Further research discovered the following link to the original Uri Blau story: www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1041622.html
In Israel, reality hides under a ‘top secret’ stamp: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
It was spring 1983, the height of the first Lebanon War. A young officer appeared at my door and placed two documents in my hand that had been stamped “Highly Classified.”
One was an intelligence evaluation that found, unequivocally, that no diplomatic or security purpose was being served by Israeli troops’ continued bloodletting on the mountains around Beirut. The second was a plan for the approaching 35th Independence Day parade in Jerusalem. In a bid to raise the nation’s flagging morale, prime minister Menachem Begin and outgoing defense minister Ariel Sharon were considering spending tens of millions of shekels from state coffers to bring tanks into “unified” Jerusalem.
The young officer said his conscience had brought him to my home, as he hoped to publicize the files’ contents and save precious blood and money.
The label “highly classified” does not automatically turn a document into a security concern, the leaking of which constitutes espionage or treason. In most cases, the designation is intended simply to ensure that the file’s contents do not reach the public’s view. The more highly classified a document, the smaller the list of readers and the higher the penalty for leaking it.
Some of the same prominent politicians and security figures who are today expressing shock at Kam’s alleged misdeeds have, during my decades of journalism, in fact given me material for countless articles related to strategic issues. The difference between the journalist who thrives off of access to classified material and the kind who earns his livelihood printing the statements of spokespeople is akin to the difference between a democratic state and a totalitarian regime. A democratic government does not, as a rule, stem leaks. Nor does it interrogate journalists.
In the summer of 1967, Yeshayahu Leibowitz prophesied that Israel’s occupation would corrupt the country and turn it into “a Shin Bet state.” As early as the first intifada, we understood there is no such thing as an enlightened occupation. One nation cannot rule over another for 43 years without behaving cruelly toward the helpless, without executing people without trial, without embittering the lives of women and children, the sick and elderly.
To manage an occupation, a nation must raise obedient soldiers and officers – the kind who sit quietly while ideas are floated on how to circumvent the rulings of the supposedly leftist High Court, how to keep prying journalists at bay and how to deceive the meddlesome state comptroller. Without collaborators within the establishment, dozens of “legal” settlements wouldn’t be built on “state lands,” nor “unauthorized outposts” on private Palestinian territory.
Right now, hundreds of clerks and officers are sitting in the Defense Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the army lacking the courage to contact a journalist and divulge that the ministers or commanders in charge are endangering their children’s future.
Some are keeping to themselves the real story behind the big lie peddled by Ehud Barak, Shaul Mofaz and Moshe Ya’alon – the falsehood that “Yasser Arafat planned the intifada,” which gave rise to the disastrous “there is no partner” ideology. The real story, of course, is contained in documents stamped with the words “Top Secret”.
Jonathan Cook: Blau-Kamm case exposes the dark underbelly of Israel’s security state: IOA
What is misleadingly being called in Israel the “Anat Kamm espionage affair” is quickly revealing the dark underbelly of a nation that has worshipped for decades at the altar of a security state.
Next week 23-year-old Kamm is due to stand trial for her life — or rather the state’s demand that she serve a life sentence for passing secret documents to an Israeli reporter, Uri Blau, of the liberal Haaretz daily. She is charged with spying.
Blau himself is in hiding in London, facing, if not a Mossad hit squad, at least the stringent efforts of Israel’s security services to get him back to Israel over the opposition of his editors, who fear he will be put away too.
This episode has been dragging on behind the scenes for months, since at least December, when Kamm was placed under house arrest pending the trial.
Not a word about the case leaked in Israel until this week when the security services, who had won from the courts a blanket gag order — a gag on the gag, so to speak — were forced to reverse course when foreign bloggers began making the restrictions futile [including notably Richard Silverstein]. Hebrew pages on Facebook had already laid out the bare bones of the story.
So, now that much of the case is out in the light, what are the crimes supposedly committed by Kamm and Blau?
During her conscription, Kamm is said to have copied possibly hundreds of army documents that revealed systematic law-breaking by the Israeli high command operating in the occupied Palestinian territories, including orders to ignore court rulings. She was working at the time in the office of Brig Gen Yair Naveh, who is in charge of operations in the West Bank.
Blau’s crime is that he published a series of scoops based on her leaked information that have highly embarrassed senior Israeli officers by showing their contempt for the rule of law.
His reports included revelations that the senior command had approved targeting Palestinian bystanders during the military’s extra-judicial assassinations in the occupied territories; that, in violation of a commitment to the high court, the army had issued orders to execute wanted Palestinians even if they could be safely apprehended; and that the defence ministry had a compiled a secret report showing that the great majority of settlements in the West Bank were illegal even under Israeli law (all are illegal in international law).
In a properly democratic country, Kamm would have an honorable defence against the charges, of being a whistle-blower rather than a spy, and Blau would be winning journalism prizes not huddling away in exile.
But this is Israel. Here, despite a desperate last-stand for the principles of free speech and the rule of law in the pages of the Haaretz newspaper today, which is itself in the firing line over its role, there is almost no public sympathy for Kamm or even Blau.
The pair are already being described, both by officials and in chat forums and talkback columns, as traitors who should be jailed, disappeared or executed for the crime of endangering the state.
The telling comparison being made is to Mordechai Vanunu, the former technician at the Dimona nuclear plant who exposed Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal. Inside Israel, he is universally reviled to this day, having spent nearly two decades in harsh confinement. He is still under a loose house arrest, denied the chance to leave the country.
Blau and Kamm have every reason to be worried they may share a similar fate. Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, which has been leading the investigation, said yesterday that they had been too “sensitive to the media world” in pursuing the case for so long and that the Shin Bet would now “remove its gloves”.
Maybe that explains why Kamm’s home address was still visible on the charge sheet published yesterday, putting her life in danger from one of those crazed talkbackers.
It certainly echoes warnings we have had before from the Shin Bet about how it operates.
Much like Blau, Azmi Bishara, once head of a leading Arab party in Israel, is today living in exile after the Shin Bet put him in their sights. He had been campaigning for democratic reforms that would make Israel a “state of all its citizens” rather than a Jewish state.
While Bishara was abroad in 2007, the Shin Bet announced that he would be put on trial for treason when he returned, supposedly because he had had contacts with Hizbullah during Israel’s attack on Lebanon in 2006.
Few experts believe Bishara could have had any useful information for Hizbullah, but the Shin Bet’s goals and modus operandi were revealed later by Diskin in a letter on its attitude to Bishara and his democratisation campaign. The Shin Bet was there, he said, to thwart the activities of groups or individuals who threatened the state’s Jewish character “even if such activity is sanctioned by the law”.
Diskin called this the principle of “a democracy defending itself” when it was really a case of Jewish leaders in a state based on Jewish privilege protecting those privileges. This time it is about the leaders of Israel’s massive security industry protecting their privileges in a security state by silencing witnesses to their crimes and keeping ordinary citizens in ignorance.
Justifying his decision to “take the gloves off” in the case of Kamm and Blau, Diskin said: “It is a dream of every enemy state to get its hands on these kinds of documents” — that is, documents proving that the Israeli army has repeatedly broken the country’s laws, in addition, of course, to its systematic violations of international law.
Diskin claims that national security has been put at risk, even though the reports Blau based on the documents — and even the documents themselves — were presented to, and approved by, the military censor for publication. The censor can restrict publication based only on national security concerns, unlike Diskin, the army senior command and the government, who obey other kinds of concerns.
Diskin knows there is every chance he will get away with his ploy because of a brainwashed Israeli public, a largely patriotic media and a supine judiciary.
The two judges who oversaw the months of gagging orders to silence any press discussion of this case did so on the say-so of the Shin Bet that there were vital national security issues at stake. Both judges are stalwarts of Israel’s enormous security industry.
Einat Ron was appointed a civilian judge in 2007 after working her way up the ranks of the military legal establishment, there to give a legal gloss to the occupation. Notoriously in 2003, when she was the chief military prosecutor, she secretly proposed various fabrications to the army so that it could cover up the killing of an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, Khalil al-Mughrabi, two years earlier. Her role only came to light because a secret report into the boy’s death was mistakenly attached to the army’s letter to an Israeli human rights group.
The other judge is Ze’ev Hammer, who finally overturned the gag order this week — but only after a former supreme court judge, Dalia Dorner, now the head of Israel’s Press Council, belatedly heaped scorn on it. She argued that, with so much discussion of the case outside Israel, the world was getting the impression that Israel flouted democratic norms.
Judge Hammer has his own distinguished place in Israel’s security industry, according to Israeli analyst Dimi Reider. During his eight years of legal study, Hammer worked for both the Shin Bet and Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Judge Hammer and Judge Ron are deeply implicated in the same criminal outfit — the Israeli security establishment — that is now trying to cover up the tracks that lead directly to its door. Kamm is doubtless wondering what similar vested interests the judges who hear her case next week will not be declaring.
Writing in Haaretz today, Blau said he had been warned “that if I return to Israel I could be silenced for ever, and that I would be charged for crimes related to espionage”. He concluded that “this isn’t only a war for my personal freedom but for Israel’s image”.
He should leave worrying about Israel’s image to Netanyahu, Diskin and judges like Dorner. That was why the gag order was enforced in the first place. This is not a battle for Israel’s image; it’s a battle for what is left of its soul.
EDITOR: The BDS Bites
Israel’s celebrations of 62 years to the Nakba, organised by the Zionist Federation, and consisting of the annual Victory Parade of Israeli brutality, have suffered a further setback, as Mira Awad pulls out of this ridiculous event. The story of death threats is another production of the anti-antisemitism brigade.
Israeli-Arab singer cancels U.K. show following death threats: Haaretz
Israeli-Arab singer Mira Awad cancelled a planned concert in London marking Israel’s 62nd Independence Day after receiving several anonymous death threats, the Jewish Chronicle reported Saturday.
Awad, who represented Israel in last year’s Eurovision Song Contest alongside Achinoam Nini, also known as NOA, has been performing with her Jewish partner around the world promoting the message of peace and co-existence between Jews and Arabs.
Awad and Nini were invited to be the main act in the annual British concert organized by the Zionist Federation – which is scheduled to take place this year on April 19 – yet following the threats it was decided that Nini will perform alone, the Chronicles reported.
Awad has been placed under constant security surveillance at her home in Tel Aviv.
“Mira and NOA’s message is about finding a peaceful way forward,” Awad’s manager Ofer Pesenzon said, adding that “it is tragic that when both sides try to come together by any means possible to build a better future for Israel and its citizens, there are those prepared to use violence and intimidation to destroy it.”
Zionist Federation Executive Director Alan Aziz said in response to the events that “Mira wanted to be the Arab Israeli voice promoting a peaceful way forward, and the threats to her life expose the real truth behind the conflict.”
Noam Chomsky, Gilbert Achcar: On the Legitimacy of the State: IOA
Noam Chomsky: I don’t think that the notion of legitimacy of a state means very much. Is the United States a legitimate state? It’s based on genocide; it conquered half of Mexico. What makes it legitimate? The way the international system is set up, states have certain rights; that has nothing to do with their legitimacy. Every state you can think of is based on violence, repression, expulsion, and all sorts of crimes. And the state system itself has no inherent legitimacy. It’s just an institutional form that developed and that was imposed with plenty of violence. The question of legitimacy just doesn’t arise. There is an international order in which it is essentially agreed that states have certain rights, but that provides them with no legitimacy, Israel or anyone else.
IOA Editor: An illuminating exchange between Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar on the important question of the legitimacy of the state, and how it applies to Israel and other nation states. Presented in the context of the current wave of accusations that critics of the Israeli occupation, and of Israel’s systematic and ongoing violations of international law, are “delegitimizers” — a recently coined term created by Israeli propaganda experts as part of an effort to, in their words, “delegitimize the delegitimizers.”
An excerpt from Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar, Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy. Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice, edited by Stephen R. Shalom (expanded edition), Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009, pp. 143-148. (Footnotes have been removed from the excerpt.)
The book of extended conversations between these two leading progressive political analysts is available from the publisher at:
www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=143446.
Shalom: There has been much debate regarding the legitimacy of the Israeli state. To what extent is Israel a legitimate, or an illegitimate, state?
Chomsky: I don’t think that the notion of legitimacy of a state means very much. Is the United States a legitimate state? It’s based on genocide; it conquered half of Mexico. What makes it legitimate? The way the international system is set up, states have certain rights; that has nothing to do with their legitimacy. Every state you can think of is based on violence, repression, expulsion, and all sorts of crimes. And the state system itself has no inherent legitimacy. It’s just an institutional form that developed and that was imposed with plenty of violence. The question of legitimacy just doesn’t arise. There is an international order in which it is essentially agreed that states have certain rights, but that provides them with no legitimacy, Israel or anyone else.
Achcar: We could put the question in another way. If one tries to define the origins of the Israeli state, the formula that comes to mind is the title of a famous piece by Maxime Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? It points to a fact that is built into the history of the state; of course, one could say the same of many states. (Chomsky: Most.) But then you have the factor of time: Israel is a very recent colonial-settler state, and it is based on the expulsion of the original inhabitants of Palestine, not on genocide like the United States. Ironically, states based on genocide are in a more comfortable position. Not from the moral point of view, of course, but from the political point of view, in terms of the existence of a challenge to their legitimacy. In the case of expulsion, those expelled continue to challenge the state’s legitimacy; in the case of genocide, those who might be challengers have been wiped out. And to be sure, all states are based on violence, but cases like the apartheid state in South Africa, or Algeria at the time of French domination, cannot be put in the same category as, let’s say, states that are not or are no longer contested in their legitimacy. So the fact is that Israel is confronted with vehement questioning of its legitimacy, of its “right to exist”: Most Arabs are ready to recognize it de facto, as a fact, but not de jure, by right.
Chomsky: The notion of “right to exist” appears to have been invented by advocates of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. And it’s interesting the way it has spread. This notion doesn’t exist in international law. No state has a right to exist. So Mexicans don’t accept the right of the United States to exist, sitting on half of Mexico. They recognize the United States, they recognize the right of the United States to live in peace and security within recognized borders, but they don’t recognize the right of the United States to exist, nor should they. Nor do the Hopi Indians. They recognize the United States, but not its right to exist. I have never seen a careful study, but as far as I can tell, the notion of “right to exist” was developed in the 1970s, at the point where the major Arab states, with the tacit support of the PLO , accepted that Israel had a “right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries”—the wording of UN Security Council Resolution 242 adopted in the aftermath of the June 1967 war, incorporated in a UN Security Council resolution vetoed by the United States in January 1976. In order to raise the barriers, to prevent negotiation and settlement from proceeding, U.S. and Israeli propaganda elevated the demand, from a right that holds for all states—“to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries”—to the “right to exist.” So the new barrier was that unless Palestinians accepted the right of Israel to exist—that is, the legitimacy of their dispossession and expulsion—then they couldn’t be accepted as negotiating partners. As far as I can tell, that was just a way to prevent negotiations, at a time when the United States and Israel were becoming almost totally isolated internationally in their refusal to proceed with implementing a very broad international consensus on a two-state settlement. I don’t think we should accept that notion; that’s a propaganda notion. No state has a right to exist, and no one has any reason to accept the right to exist. States are what they are. None of them have any inherent legitimacy. You’re right, they differ; they have many different dimensions. So apartheid South Africa was illegitimate in a particular ugly sense. Is it legitimate now? Apartheid is over, but for the same 80 percent of the Black population, maybe the situation is worse than it was before, after the neoliberal measures were instituted in South Africa. Is that a legitimate state?
You’re quite right that Israel is close to unique in one sense—namely that it was established after the contemporary international order was formed in 1945. Israel became a state in 1948, like India and Pakistan, so it’s one of those few states that was established after the current international order was established. That imposes an extra problematic element—the same with India. Why should India be sitting on Kashmir, for example? Kashmiris don’t want it; it was because the Maharaja happened to make that decision against the will of the population, and they’re holding it by violence. They won’t allow a referendum, which the United Nations demanded. The Indian special forces, the Rashtriya Rifles, carry out terrible atrocities. They faked the elections, which led to a lot of violence that still goes on. There’s an element of illegitimacy.
Achcar: I think there are different levels that are being mixed here. Of course, no state on earth is a state where you have social equality. That’s entirely obvious. So what you said about South Africa could apply to the United States or any other state. (Chomsky: But there are extremes.) There are extremes, of course, but we are speaking here of a different level. You have states that, for the overwhelming majority of their population, are considered to be their state, and you don’t have a problem. But then you have situations that are part of the colonial legacy, created by force and rejected by majorities of the populations concerned. Kashmir, Kurdistan, and the rest are situations that are illegitimate in that sense, where the majority concerned do not consider themselves represented in the existing state structure.
Chomsky: We can go on. Take Turkey, after the expulsion of Greeks. The Greeks don’t accept that, even to this day. There’s no legitimacy to it; it’s just been settled by various arrangements of force. Israel is unusual in that it was established a little later than the others, but it’s very similar in character. And the United States is maybe the most extreme example. Almost the entire population was either exterminated or driven out of their lands. And then it’s sitting on half of another country. The only reason it didn’t conquer Canada was because the British deterrent was too strong. I simply don’t think that the question of legitimacy of a state can seriously be raised. They’re all illegitimate.
Achcar: Yes, but once again, it depends on what you mean by that. In the case of Israel, you have a situation where the overwhelming majority—more than 80 percent—of the original Arab Palestinian population of that territory had been expelled in 1948.
Chomsky: What would the original population of the current United States think?
Achcar: I said from the start that states based on effective genocide are, in a way, in a more comfortable situation, because they don’t have any massive population contesting their existence or legitimacy. In the case of the Israeli state, on the other hand, you have a population that is at least as numerous as the settler-dominant one, and is claiming a right to the same territory, which it sees as having been usurped. As long as there is no solution that is acceptable to this population, you have a problem with legitimacy. If this population agrees that the state, although stemming from historical injustice and oppression, should nevertheless be accepted as an established fact, in the context of some settlement, then the problem is solved. But, as long as you don’t have that, you have a problem of legitimacy—in the very formal democratic sense of the term.
Chomsky: As long as something is contested, it’s contested, I agree. So Sri Lanka is seriously contested. India is seriously contested. Alsace-Lorraine is no longer contested because both sides recognize that the next time they contest it, they’ll wipe out the world. In the case of Israel, it’s mostly accepted even by the Palestinians. But until it’s totally accepted, yes, it’ll be contested. That’s a different dimension than the question of legitimacy. The fact that some people have given up doesn’t make it legitimate.
Achcar: No. Legitimacy is based on consent. Legitimacy is the consent of the majority. And the consent of the majority defines legitimacy, at least in political philosophy and democratic constitutional law. And a state is legitimate when it is based on the consent of the majority of its rightful population. Now, again, the problem of the Israeli state is that the bulk of the Palestinian population has been expelled and deprived of rights since 1948. So if we consider that these people have rights on the territory from which they have been expelled, then one cannot say that the Israeli state is based on the consent of the majority of its rightful population.
Chomsky: Let’s drop the word “legitimacy.” “Legitimacy” has quite a different meaning in international affairs. You should just say, straight out, that the original indigenous population of the land on which Israel was established does not accept the legitimacy of their expulsion. That’s true. But that has nothing to do with whether the state is legitimate. You could say the same about many other states. People may accept it, but they don’t accept its legitimacy. I don’t know what would happen if you took a poll in Alsace-Lorraine, for example, about whether people would accept the legitimacy of the solution. They’d say, okay, that’s the way it worked out. They may think it’s legitimate; they may not. If you went to a Native American Hopi reservation, they certainly wouldn’t regard the United States as legitimate, but they accept it.
Achcar: If even they accept it, then it is legitimate.
Chomsky: Fine. But insofar as the Palestinians have any organized voice, they accepted Israel a long time ago. They backed the 1976 UN resolution (vetoed by the United States) that called for a two-state settlement. In 1988, the Palestinian National Council formally accepted such a settlement. But I don’t think that confers any legitimacy on Israel, any more than any other arrangement confers legitimacy on a state. But as far as acceptance is concerned, yes, they accepted it, though of course there are things that are contested, like the right of return, or the borders and so on.
Take the negotiations at Taba, for example, in January 2001. They didn’t reach an agreement, but they came very close. As a matter of fact, at the final press conference the negotiators said, we have never been this close to an agreement, and if we could continue a little longer, we’d probably reach an agreement. That agreement, had it been reached, would have amounted to acceptance by the only organized administrative structure within the Palestinian world. Would that have made Israel legitimate? No. Any more than the United States, or France, or India, or Sri Lanka—go through the list—is legitimate.
Achcar: I think we cannot apply double standards here. We cannot blame European governments, the U.S. government, and others for disregarding the opinion of their populations on the issue of the Iraq war, and approve as the authoritative voice of the Palestinian people the decision by what is the equivalent of a government of the Palestinians, disregarding the opinion of the people.
Chomsky: So you’re now saying the Palestinian Authority is illegitimate?
Achcar: No, what I’m saying is that no agreement could be considered legitimate if it is not based on consultation with the Palestinian population by some kind of referendum. It needs to be approved by the majority of the oppressed Palestinian population